


Idernee

by thedevilchicken



Category: Ben-Hur (1959)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 18:09:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2821430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A treat for AlterEgon, Yuletide 2014! Based more on the book than the movie but with elements of both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Idernee

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlterEgon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlterEgon/gifts).



When he dreams, he dreams of Idernee. 

Of course, the palace when he dreams is not the worldly palace. There are no people bustling there outside as he makes his entry to the vestibule, and indeed no streets in which they all could linger. There is no sun as he enters and no stars up in the sky. For all the logic of his education it must seem the palace exists only in suspension, in a void between the worlds, strung between the miseries of Tartarus and the bright, joyous fields of Elysium. Perhaps, Messala thinks, as he passes the great stone ibis fountain and he climbs the stairs to the marble portico above, that is not so very far from the truth of it.

He knows what lies ahead. He has been here so many times before this, though only once when waking. He knows the high and narrow passageway with its red tiled floors, the doors that all stand open there in welcome, all except for one. He knows the final doorway that then sways inwards of its own accord, even as he reaches out to it. And he knows the room that all of this has led him to, the great atrium, so perfect in every proportions, so magnificent in its decor. Perhaps his mind has tended to embellish it somewhat throughout the years, but this is still the room in which it happened. Judah Ben-Hur died here, so long ago.

He stops by the impluvium and looks up through the opening there high above, through which the sunlight should have poured and did on the day when he visited. There is no light to enter there and even the burning lamps seem to shine only coldly. He shivers, as he always does now, resting his hands on the cold bronze railings that surround the impluvium. There is no reflection in the water when he looks down at it, only ripples on the surface as though a breeze were blowing that he cannot feel at all.

And when he looks across the room, as he must despite himself, he sees Judah's body lying there. He is bloody and beaten and broken and is barely recognisable as the fine son of Hur or the boyhood friend that he once knew. Judah is dead, and Messala is sickened through and through as he knows what will happen next. The sequence remains the same and so his grip tightens on the railing as he watches, watches Judah's body rise and turn toward him, grotesque, a puppet that jerks there on its invisible strings. Messala fees that he should be the master of it, but his hands falter at the mechanism. Something else is at play.

Judah's eyes open. His broken mouth smiles, bloody. Then Messala blinks and in that instant there is a shift, a sudden vertiginous tilt, and Judah is then as beautiful as he ever was, as beautiful as Ganymede. He is dressed as Messala is himself, in best Roman dress, the finest, to match their fine surroundings. He is the son of Arrius and there is no blood on him as he stands there as his mirror image, as his hands come to rest on the railings, as they share the same dry air. He can hear his breath. It is the only sound he hears.

Judah lives. The surge in Messala as he looks upon him is the same as it ever was and will ever be; it is a surge of relief, of shame, of love.

"Will you walk with me, my Judah?" he asks. 

Judah's smile is faint and derisory but he inclines his head just a fraction in acceptance. Messala moves around the impluvium, his hand follows the cold chill of metal surrounding it until they stand beside each other. And then that hand goes up to rest on Judah's shoulder as it always did, a lifetime ago back there in Jerusalem, when they were young together. When he returned from Rome he laid his hand there one more time, when their quarrel had just begun in earnest. How he hates the memory of that day, how affronted he felt by Judah's faith, by his willing lack of education, by his refusal of his friendship. How he missed him after, and misses him still. How he punished him, to the bitter end.

They take a turn about the room, quiet, their footsteps oddly silent in the air. Messala tries to admire the frescoes that adorn the walls, the fine furniture with all its expert craftsmanship, the shining gold of the lamps, but it is the mosaics underfoot that draw his eye each and every time that he returns. He sees his life there, and sees Judah's. He sees the arrival of Valerius Gratus, sees Miriam and Tirzah imprisoned and then leprous. He sees Judah sentenced, rowing hard aboard the galley, sees the battle that so nearly led to his death. He sees the noble Quintus Arrius. He sees three men bearing gifts and the one they call the Christ. He sees Iras who has always been so ready to betray. And then, he sees this moment. 

When he lifts his hand from Judah's shoulder, the tunic beneath is red with blood. He knows that blood is not Judah's blood. He knows it is his own.

"Will you sit with me, my Judah?"

He nods his approval, and they seat themselves on a nearby couch, plush and luxurious. There ought to be comfort but Messala aches to his bones; the expression drawn on Judah's face as he watches him then is something close to pity. Messala has never sought pity, will not, not even now. 

On the ground there by the impluvium, tiled into the mosaic, is the chariot race in the circus of Antioch. The impluvium has begun to leak across it, leaks water filled with reddish rust, leaks a thin sheen in the colour of drying blood. He does not wish to look at it and yet he knows he must. All around the leaking pool is the story of that day, the wager; there is Judah who steers the sheik's four quick, proud horses, the dolphins dipping as the laps are counted down. There is Messala's whip, their quadrigae veering ever closer. There at the end is Judah standing triumphant. There at the end is Messala's body in the sand beneath the wheels. The sand is there now; he can feel it still.

"Will you lie with me, my Judah?"

Pity mingles with a subtle sneer there on his Judah's face, and yet he does what he is asked. He stretches out along the couch and invites Messala with him with his hands and with his eyes, arranging him beside him as he now has no strength to do so for himself. Messala looks up, up to the opening set there in the high dome of the ceiling, up to the void beyond into which he feels he could disappear. Judah's hand at his face turns him from it, from oblivion, guiding their gazes to meet. 

Hot rivulets of blood run down Messala's arms, drip from him to spatter silently across the mosaic beneath. The pain of his injuries is there, he knows, so intense that he shivers but can barely feel it. He knows that the physicians took his left leg above the knee. He knows that his left arm will never have the strength to hold a cup to his lips, let alone a sword to the throat of his enemy. And Judah also knows this, as he looks at him then. Judah knows the frequency with which he has wished for death. Judah knows the struggle he has felt each day to understand his limitations, and to survive and to flourish in spite of them. Judah knows, but Judah does not care. 

This is not Judah Ben-Hur who holds him bleeding in his arms. This is not Judah Ben-Hur whose expression is that of such cold satire, the curl of whose lip makes him wish to cringe away. The Cupid's bow of his lips seems then strangely straightened, his fine nose now bent, hooked almost to the aquiline proportion. When Messala looks at him, he can barely recognise the lost companion of his youth. This is the younger Arrius. This is the Roman he wished for and not the Jew he loved. 

"Where are you, my Judah?"

The languid drawl of his Forum masters now evanesces from his voice, rhetoric abandoned for what use is it to him now? He closes his eyes to the cold countenance of Rome and to its fashions, to what he knows has torn this rift between them; he sees there in Arrius all that Rome would strip from Judah, how barren he should become without it. It is only now, in such dreams as this, that he has ever understood the nature of his wrongs, or repented them. 

As Messala's eyes close tighter, Judah's full lips press to his forehead. They are warm and familiar as they ever were.

"I am here, beside you." 

Strong hands move over him. They linger here and there, press to the site of one injury and then the next not to staunch the flow of his blood but perhaps instead to quicken it. He knew Judah's touch in his youth as he knows it now though his hands are broader, coarser, stronger from the galley or palaestra. His fingers trace the jagged lines of all Messala's broken bones, they seek beneath the skin and tear him deeper. He hopes there will be nothing left. 

"I have missed you, my Judah."

Judah does not reply but his warm mouth finds the crook of his neck to rest there. He has him in his arms. _Down Eros, up Mars!_ Messala thinks, thinks bitterly, but when was Mars ever the true victor? In their shared youth they made love and laughed in stolen moments that would make even Eros blush. And Judah is still beautiful as Ganymede, he thinks again, even now and even here. He is stronger now than Jupiter. He is a Titan; he will swallow him whole. And though this may be Tartarus, that is Messala's most devout of wishes. Judah's sweet mouth and cruel hands will be his punishment.

When he wakes, he knows he will remember only fragments. He will remember blood on skin and blood on tile, he will remember Judah's strong hands and the warm, welcome terror of the void. But the memory will fade just as it always does from night to night, until it all begins anew. In just moments, he will forget it all, all but the murder of his dearest friend in the Roman palace of Idernee. He will forget it all but the knowledge that the reign of Eros outlasted that of Mars.

He will go on in life upon waking because he must go on, because he is Roman or perhaps in spite of that. He will not see redemption in this lifetime but redemption he knows is not such a Roman conceit; he cannot lay claim to it even for all his love of Judah, for his regret, for his abhorrence. Instead, he thinks, he will seek to overcome his injuries, he will fight to master them, he will not succumb. Valour is Roman. He will rise above, he strengthens hour by hour, and when one day he returns there to Judea, to the land of their youth and of Judah's great passion, he will do so as her prefect. Perhaps he cannot free her, but he can perhaps now understand her. 

And, for as long as he lives, he will dream his dreams of Idernee. He will dream his dreams of Judah, and regret.


End file.
